First of all, Area 51 is just Jesse James' Monster Garage for Fighter-Jocks, Bomber-Barons and drone-drivers. Anti-gravity is likely never going to be real. I wish it were andwe could abandon rockets altogether.

But the kicker is this. Hoaxland...I mean Hoagland...maintains that the reason the "over-unity devices" and similar woo only works sometimes is due to the 19.5 whatzit, and I think he said something about a previous war between planets messing with the space time continuum.

After all, there must be a reason why a super-advanced species can fly many light years, and then seem not to know how to land. Maybe its radar beams interfering, or whatever.

The point is this. Even if all the space alien field-manip drives were real, they are evidently wonky around this Earth--so we STILL need rockets, since no inertia drive dampener is ever going to affect a SRB in the least.

I'm thinking that if we ever do have space drives, they will be like ion engines. No good for lifting off a surface, so the LV still plays a part.

Right now, our best bet is nuclear-thermal. (NTR). That means lots of high volume LH2. So an LV that is also roomy, wide and large, will be what is launching it--and that will be SLS.